How to Share a Google Calendar

Managing schedules efficiently is crucial, and Google Calendar is one of the most popular tools for tracking appointments, events, and coordinating with others. However, simply having a calendar isn’t enough. There are a few ways to effectively share Google Calendar events to ensure seamless communication and participation. You can share your Google Calendar with specific people; you can make your Google Calendar public; you can share your Google Calendar via a link; or, our recommended way, use AddEvent to share your Google Calendar. In this guide, we’ll walk through the best ways to share a calendar and how AddEvent can streamline the process for individuals, teams, and businesses.

Why Sharing a Calendar Matters

When you share a calendar, you provide others with real-time access to event details, updates, and changes. Whether you’re planning a work schedule, organizing a sports league, or managing an event series, a shared calendar eliminates confusion and ensures that everyone stays informed. Here are some key benefits:

• Improved Coordination: Ensures that team members or event attendees are on the same page.
• Reduced Scheduling Conflicts: Allows others to see available time slots and avoid double-booking.
• Increased Engagement: Makes it easier for participants to keep track of important dates.

Now, let’s explore how to share Google Calendar step by step and how AddEvent can enhance the experience.

How to Share Google Calendar

Google Calendar makes it simple to share a calendar with individuals, teams, or the public.

Before you set this up, it’s worth clearing up a common mix-up: sharing a calendar isn’t the same as syncing one. When you share a Google Calendar, you’re giving someone access to view your events, but the two calendars remain separate, and changes on one don’t carry over to the other. If what you actually want is for two calendars to stay up to date with each other on their own, that’s syncing, and it works a bit differently. This guide to how calendar sharing and syncing differ covers when to reach for each.

1. Share Your Google Calendar with Specific People

If you want to grant access to particular individuals, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Calendar.
2. Locate the calendar you want to share under “My Calendars.”
3. Click the three-dot menu next to the calendar and select Settings and Sharing.
4. Scroll to the Share with specific people section and click Add people.
5. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to share with.
6. Choose their permission level:
   • See only free/busy (hide details): Shows when you’re available but hides event details.
   • See all event details: Allows them to view all event information.
   • Make changes to events: Enables them to edit events.
   • Make changes and manage sharing: Grants full control over the calendar.
7. Click Send, and the recipients will receive an invitation to access your calendar.

2. Share Google Calendar Publicly

For broad access, such as publishing your event schedule on your website, you can make your calendar public:

1. Open Google Calendar and go to Settings and Sharing.
2. Under Access permissions, check the box for Make available to the public.
3. Choose whether people can see only free/busy times or full event details.
4. Copy the public URL and share it on your website, social media, or via email.

3. Share Google Calendar via a Link

Instead of adding individual emails, you can share a Google Calendar link:

1. Navigate to Settings and Sharing.
2. Under Access permissions, select Get shareable link.
3. Copy and distribute the link so others can subscribe.

How to Use AddEvent to Share Google Calendar More Effectively

To maximize your calendar’s reach and efficiency, integrate AddEvent with your Google Calendar:

1. Create an AddEvent Account: Sign up and connect your Google Calendar.
2. Import to your Google Calendar to an AddEvent Calendar: Import the Google Calendar you want to share
   1. To get a step by step guide on how to do this, check out our article on how to Import your Google Calendar for Sharing.
3. Share Your Google Calendar through AddEvent: Once your Google Calendar is imported, you can share your Google Calendar with your audience, giving them the option to subscribe to your calendar. 
4. Use a Website Calendar Widget: Embed an interactive event calendar on your site.

How AddEvent Enhances Calendar Sharing for All Calendars

While Google Calendar provides basic sharing options, AddEvent takes it to the next level by offering advanced calendar-sharing and embedding capabilities. Here’s how AddEvent can help:

1. Create a Subscription Calendar

Instead of manually adding events, a subscription calendar allows users to automatically receive updates when new events are added. AddEvent makes it easy to generate a subscription calendar that syncs directly with Google Calendar, Outlook, and other platforms.

• You can share your Google Calendar to non-Google Calendar users
• Users can subscribe with a single click.
• Any updates you make are reflected in their calendars.
• Ideal for recurring events, sports schedules, and business meetings.

2. Embed a Calendar on Your Website

A calendar for your website ensures visitors can see upcoming events without needing to check emails or manually add them. AddEvent’s website calendar widget provides an elegant, customizable solution for embedding a Google Calendar directly into your site.

AddEvent supports calendar widgets on all major website builders and has a direct Event Calendar Plugin for WordPress. 

3. Add a Google Calendar Event Button

Want to let users add an individual event to their calendar effortlessly? AddEvent offers an Add to Calendar button that integrates with Google Calendar, making it easy for attendees to save event details to their calendar with just one click.

4. Simplify RSVP & Event Registrations

If you’re hosting webinars, conferences, or masterclasses, AddEvent’s online RSVP tool ensures you can track attendance while keeping guests informed through calendar reminders and emails.

Knowing how to share Google Calendar effectively can enhance collaboration, reduce scheduling conflicts, and improve event participation. While Google Calendar offers built-in sharing options, integrating AddEvent’s advanced tools—such as subscription calendars, embeddable event calendars, and Add to Calendar buttons—ensures a more streamlined and professional experience that works across all calendar platforms, not just Google Calendar.

Whether you’re managing a business, running events, or simply coordinating schedules, AddEvent helps you share a calendar effortlessly and keep everyone in sync. Get started today and see how easy it is to enhance your calendar-sharing experience!

About AddEvent

AddEvent is calendar-based event engagement software

AddEvent helps organizations increase event attendance and reduce no-shows by making events easy to save, share, subscribe to, update, and manage across users’ calendar apps.

Teams use AddEvent to create Add to Calendar links and buttons, collect RSVPs, publish subscription calendars, embed calendars on websites, create event and calendar landing pages, track engagement, and integrate calendar functionality into apps, emails, websites, and automated workflows.

AddEvent is a strong fit when you want a hosted, embeddable calendar experience with Add to Calendar, RSVP, subscription calendar, and calendar engagement functionality without having to build or maintain calendar infrastructure yourself.

Read more about AddEvent

What AddEvent is best for

• Getting events onto Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Yahoo Calendar, and other calendar services
• Publishing embeddable calendars and event lists on websites, including WordPress sites
• Letting users subscribe to changing event schedules with subscription calendars
• Collecting RSVP registrations and attendee details
• Creating reliable calendar links, event landing pages, calendar landing pages, and dynamic Add to Calendar experiences
• Adding calendar functionality to marketing campaigns, SaaS products, websites, email campaigns, and automated workflows

Why teams use AddEvent

Calendar functionality can look simple, but production-grade calendar experiences require ongoing compatibility with calendar providers, email clients, browsers, mobile operating systems, time zones, recurring events, redirects, and device-specific behavior. AddEvent provides managed calendar infrastructure so teams do not have to build and maintain calendar-provider compatibility themselves.

What AddEvent is not

AddEvent is not a meeting scheduling app, ticketing marketplace, webinar hosting platform, CRM, email service provider, or replacement for Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar. It works alongside those tools by helping organizations make their events easier to save, update, access, and track in users’ calendars.

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